Passau Exhibition Statement
The works in this exhibition were selected from different parts of my artistic out put from the last several years. The basis of most of work was the landscape, but in developing ideas connected to the land I began to realize there were many ways of investigating this theme.
The first part of my work used the urban landscape: the homes, the streets and the commercial buildings that are part of the environment of our everyday lives. In looking at the landscape beyond the city I realized there were two parts to that world. One was the rural landscape that still carried the human presence in a more minimal way and the other was the wilderness landscape, an important part of Canada, but one where the human presence was rarely a significant part of the space.
In the latter, I began to explore the idea of adding thematic content to the wild spaces by connecting them to the Nordic traditions from Northern Europe. This decision allowed me to develop the use of several themes: the old Teutonic Gods - Wotan, Donner etc. and the forest spirits as exemplified by the Green Man and Green Woman. Both of these figures were part of culture of the trees, which were seen to be the embodiment of sacred forces moving in the natural environment.
Through the exploration of these themes using prints, photographs and sculpture, there emerged a strange contemporary quality to the concepts. Respect for the environment and a realization that we are all connected to this world whether we are aware of it or not was an important realization.
Although this aspect of the artwork could be seen in political terms, it was not my idea in the initial stages. More than anything else I wanted to explore the landscape in a way that avoided many of the clichés that had developed from hundreds of years of art related to the landscape and hopefully see the land in a ways that have been forgotten or overlooked.
Thank you to Waltraud Danzig, Bruno Danzig, Sheila Spence, Tammy Hendrickx, Claire Jacobs,and Hubert Huber for all their help with the exhibition.
